The extent and character of her information could be explained only on the assumption that somewhere in our organization, probably on the board of directors, was a masked enemy who continually gave Galt up to Valentine. He had not disappeared from the field of action. All this time he was working in the background with a single passion,--a righteous one, as he believed,--which was to assist in the overthrow of Galt. It was natural that he should join the conspirators. He brought them much information; he had political resources and access to the means of publicity. A fortuitous time arrived. For several years the public, now restored to high prosperity, observed with interest, awe, even with pride the appearance of those vast anonymous shapes which capital by a headlong impulse had been raising up to control production and transportation. Mergers, combines, trusts,--they came in endless succession. Hardly a day passed without a new sensation in phantasmic millions. People were seized with a gambling mania. Each day promoters threw an enormous mass of new and unseasoned securities upon the market, and they were frantically bought, as if the supply were in imminent danger of failing. Astonishing excesses were committed. The Stock Exchange was overwhelmed. For many weeks the lights never went out in Wall Street because clerks worked all day and all night to keep the brokers’ books straight. The cauldron boiled over badly at last, and there was a silly panic, more theatrical than serious. It served, however, to break a dream and awaken the critical faculty. The public all at once became deeply alarmed. There arose a great clamor about trusts. Those shapes which had been viewed with pride, as symbols of the nation’s progress and strength, were now perceived in the light of fear. Radical thought had been held in disesteem since the collapse of the Soft Money Plague. Here was a new bogey. Trusts were human evil objectified. They were swallowing the country up. In a little while all business would be in their hands. There would come to be only two kinds of people,--those few who owned the trusts and the many who worked for them, and freedom would perish in the land. Something would have to be done about it. Why had nothing been done? Were the trusts already more powerful than the state? Suddenly the trust vs. the state was the paramount political issue. There was an onset of books, essays, speeches, magazine and newspaper articles. Sense and folly, wisdom and demagoguery were hopelessly entangled. This kind of outburst is characteristic of a roaring, busy democracy, whose interest in its collective self is spasmodic and hysterical. The horse is stolen before anybody thinks of minding the barn.